Cooking With Fortinbras: Leftovers Soup!
Equipment needed: big pot, stove, barbeque, wooden spoon, metal sieve, aluminium foil
This is gonna seem to take a while, but if you do it nice and slow over the course of the day, just whenever you got free time for it, it'll be relaxed and easy.
To start, if you don't have metal skewers then start soaking some wooden ones now.
I'm working from leftover pork loin. I cut the outer part off, since it's kind of fatty and I was making schnitzel with the inside, nearly fatless piece. You end up with a lot of meat and a lot of fat left over. So separate them as well as you can.
Cut the meat into kebab sized cubes and marinate with wet rub: grind coriander, green or black pepper, dill and mustard seed together in a coffee grinder. Chop two cloves of garlic. Combine it all with a tablespoon of honey, two tablespoons of olive oil and a few pinches of salt. Slather the meat in it and pack it away in the fridge.
Render some fatty pieces of pig down in a big pot. Fatty bacon is the perfect thing for this, obviously I'm working with the fat from the loin.
Put the bacon or whatever you've used aside and drain most of the fat off. Leave about a tablespoon in.
Here's an important interlude: Wash yo veg, dogg. That's so basic a lot of people forget how important it is. Wash vegetables. All of them.
Cut an onion into rings and drop it in with a pinch of salt. Cook on medium high heat until lightly caramelized. Add two stalks of neatly chopped celery and one neatly chopped carrot: now you have mirepoix, a vegetable base for stocks and soups! This is the most basic possible example, so if you want other stuff in there put it in. Chilis for heat, bell peppers are wonderful, on and on. If you're cooking meat in the soup, tomatoes or pineapple juice have properties that tenderize meat. Cook for another five minutes.
If you've already got stock made then throw that shit in and SCRAPE SCRAPE SCRAPE! Get all the delicious crunchy bits off the bottom of the pot. This is called deglazing. I did not have stock since this is kind of a Leftovers Fu thing. Water will do, we're gonna keep building on this.
If you do not have one of these bad mothers you need to get on the ball. Brita water tastes better than all bottled water, is way better for the environment and costs pennies on the dollar.
Add spices. This is a spice broth. In here we have a cinnamon stick, five cloves, a few pieces of allspice, eight whole black peppercorns, a piece of star anise, paprika and whole cumin. Cumin is strong stuff, don't use as much of it as everything else. If black licorice flavor bugs you or is really overpowering to you, skip the star anise. If not then go for it, it enhances meaty tastes. Also, you want a lotta water. This is going to reduce down pretty far.
Add a dribble of lemon juice or red or white wine vinegar.
Have a bowl with some water in it on hand and bring the liquid slowly to a NEAR boil. Never boil stocks. See the foamy gunk that comes to the top? Skim that off with a spoon and drop it into your bowl of water. Once it's all nicely skimmed off two or three times, reduce the heat and leave it alone. For hours. With a meat stock you need to leave it for about eight hours, with this three will do fine. Go watch a few episodes of The Wire or catch up on some LPs. Time's up? Strain the broth. Cheesecloth if you got it, and you should got it, but if not then pass it through a metal one a few times. Back into the pot, you want the stuff hot.
Preheat a grill and skewer up the meat. Cut a couple peaches in two, remove the pit and slather them in olive oil. Throw the meat on the highest heat you've got and cook it a couple minutes per side, four sides total. Put the peach halves on slightly lower heat, cooking each side until it's lightly charred. Remove it all, cover the meat in aluminium foil, let the peaches cool for a minute and slip the skins right off. Cut into slices.
When the meat is rested, slip about five pieces per person off the skewers and drop them in the bowl. Lay a few leaves of tarragon and either small basil leaves or chiffonated basil on top of the meat.
Salt the near-boiling stock (done at the end because the stock reduces and can get overbearing really quick) and pour it over top. Let steep for a couple minutes. Drop some peach slices in.
The spice on the meat washes off into the broth a bit, giving it more flavor. The peach is nice with the aromatics and contrasts the spice and savoriness of the broth and meat nicely.
